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Possible mistake trying to avert swarm.

On inspection of a booming hive that swarmed last week I found a (still) very full 2 deeps worth of bees. Much capped brood, but not honey bound. The hive has one almost full super of honey. I found 2 queen cells at the bottom of a frame that I pinched. At that moment I thought that without a queen to lead them off I might avert another swarm. Several hours later they threw a medium sized swarm that landed about 50 ft away 12 feet in a magnolia tree.

Was pinching the queen cells the right thing to do? Or did I possibly kill the replacement queen just prior to the old queen leaving leaving me queenless? I know there are methods to avert swarming such as checkerboarding, but I just don't have the extra drawns frames, etc.

Once they have decided to swarm it is almost a certainty. Keep an eye on the hive, but chances are you didn't find all the queen cells, they usually leave about four days before the new one hatches.

If you want to avert swarms you need to start much earlier. Next time you find queen cells pull one of the frames with at least one nice cell on it and a couple of frames of brood and make a split. Open the brood area with some empty frames by checker boarding the area where you took the frames, and keep your fingers crossed.

While I agree with the others, if you only pinched 2 cells chances are that you missed the other 17 queen cells.

If you aren't sure, put the swarm into a medium super, and then in 2 weeks or so combine them back togather.

Don't feel too bad, I'm really finding that all the methods in the world don't mean a thing when you are standing out in the bee yard staring at these queen cells trying to remember what somebody wrote on the internet .